Ricky Yean's List: Social Gaming Research

• during 2007, casual games reached over 145 million people aged 12-65. Of that figure over 71 million play casual games for one or more hours per week.
• considerable consolidation
• The growth of the casual gaming audience, the engagement with the medium itself, and the heightened interest from advertisers has contributed to ad revenue projections approaching $400-700 million by 2010
• n an average week, casual gamers make 2.7 online purchases, slightly more than the general population (2.4 per week).

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• which is   why Blizzard puts on any business contract that its   developers will be free to make the games they want
• ”People buy Nintendo and Blizzard games because of their   franchise worlds.” But other third party games have as rich   of a franchise world. “Nintendo and Blizzard have the money   to delay their games and perfect them. Most third parties do   not have that luxury.” While this is true, it raises the   question as to how Nintendo and Blizzard got to where they   are. They started small like everyone else and, at a time,   also didn’t have the money.
• Nintendo and companies like Blizzard use the Spiral where   customer satisfaction is King. This leads to delays in   production, projects pulled entirely, and constant testing.   The result is a product that creates passionate users.
• The third one, the question mark, is where the User is King.   Many companies know their current ‘waterfall’ production   based method has a future of rising costs and declining   passion so they are turning to the Internet to make the User   as King. These include episodic gaming as well as   downloadable content. Will Wright is moving in this   direction. The idea is that development cycles begin moving   extremely fast as now the user is directly or indirectly   involved. Companies are confusing the User as King to mean   Customer Satisfaction is King.
• The difference between Customer Satisfaction and letting the   User in control is the matter of surprise which is critical   in entertainment. It is ridiculous to ask your customers   what surprises them.
• High definition games are just pushing development more in   the ‘waterfall’ model more due to the rising cost of art   assets. With more emphasis on the production model, this   will create less interesting games (and explains why the   Industry got into a rut as development costs went up over   the generations).
• It should be noted that Nintendo   focused their market research on non-active gamers including   non-gamers and former gamers. Nintendo never aimed at   capturing ‘casual gamers’ in the same context that birdmen   speak today.
• And these new gamers then swam   upmarket

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• No, THIS IS...DISRUPTION!!!! - Ricky Yean on 2008-07-23

• U.S. online video game subscriptions are generating $1 billion a year in subscription revenue, according to market researcher NPD Group.
• The top five games in the first quarter of 2008 were “World of Warcraft,” “RuneScape,” “Lord of the Rings Online,” “Final Fantasy XI,” and “City of Heroes.” The top casual sites in subscribers were Electronic Arts’ Pogo.com, Real Networks’ RealArcade.com, Bigfishgames.com, Gametap.com, and Disney.com.

• Rupture, Fanning's project, will carry this collaboration forward with an ability to track and challenge friends across games and platforms.

• Traditionally, large publishers have lorded over the $50 billion gaming industry by controlling two things: access and distribution
• Playfish developed the 3 games over the past 6 months and has grown to about 6 million monthly users playing an average of 30 minutes a session.
• For some perspective, EA’s Pogo.com claims about 14 million visitors per month and has been around since 1999.
• Onine gaming is currently a $1 billion a year business. Pogo.com has around 1.5 million members for it’s monthly subscription service, Club Pogo, for which they pay $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year. Free players of the main site are upsold to premium features and game downloads.

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• 
• Additionally, the company has also signed deals with AOL Gerald-Levin-on-Fear , Yahoo, and Microsoft to power in-game advertising.

• Flickr traces its origins to game industry veterans Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, whose team stumbled upon photo-sharing while they were trying to make a game. Bunchball has made a tool, dubbed Nitro, that makes web sites more engaging by instilling them with reward-based activities. Entellium has built game principles into its customer relationship management software and Seriosity has a game-like email program.
• But they haven’t responded in part because the Facebook games they fear that such games may cannibalize the highly-profitable games that game companies charge $60 for. Zichermann says that was the same disastrous response the music industry had to Napster in the late 1990s. Popular Facebook games such as Scrabulous, Werewolves, Vampires, and Friends For Sale were not built by game companies, Zichermann says.
• The content itself must be conceived of and totally integrated with the product or brand it is supporting.

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• The social network *is* the game. And most great games (thoughnot all) are also social networks - however thinly veiled.

• As silly as it may sound, Puzzle Pirates has been a surprise hit with 2 million registered users, 30,000 of whom have signed up as subscribers—worth a tidy $3.3 million inrevenue last year for Three Rings.

• 158 online games and virtual worlds in development or up and running designed specifically for children.
• Habbo - 90m accounts

     

  NeoPets - 45m accounts

     

  IMVU - 20m accounts

     

  Club Penguin - 15m accounts

     

  Star Doll - 15m accounts

     

  Gaia - 12m accounts

     

  Barbie Girls - 12m accounts

     

       

  Source: K Zero

• Habbo Hotel: 50 million members
   Neopets: 70 million+ virtual pet owners
   Coke Studios: 8+ million registered users
   Virtual Magic Kingdom: 1+ million registered users
   Goonzu: (Korea): 3 million members
   Guild Wars: 2 million members
   Project Entropia: 400,000 members
   Ragnarok Online: 17 million members
   Second Life: 290,000 members
   World of Warcraft: 5.5 million members

• Each month more than 5 million unique users socialize

• ver 1 million subscribers who pay $5 a month each. Additionally, according to Gamedaily more than 9 million players are trying out RuneScape for free. That makes for a hefty total userbase of over 10 million RuneScape players!

• Additionally, the availability of Neopets goods for purchase coincides with the beta of Viacom's new NC mall, which will house virtual boutiques where kids can shop for add-ons to their pet and its world.
• Up until now, Viacom's revenue from Neopets came from the sale of banner advertisements on the site, which boasts over 40 million registered users around the world, and more than 12 million unique new users monthly.

• The company is working with ad company called Federated Media and a Facebook application that lets you draw artwork and feature it on user profiles, called Graffiti.
• The company is making money, president Shervin Pishevar tells me, from selling advertising that targets users who play its games. For example, it it making “pretty good CPMs” on video ads that run before a game (in contrast to video ads that run before a video), he says, although he wouldn’t provide specific numbers.

• Only one year after raising money and 7 months after launching with its first Facebook application partner publisher, (fluff)Friends, Offerpal Media has 40 employees and works with some of the largest app developers, including Friends For Sale and (Lil) Green Patch.
• mobile offers work well on Facebook. Some of the softer offers, like market research, also work well. Subscriptions also work well. It varies by country - for example, our Blockbuster offer works very well in the UK.

• Some of our publishers are seeing very high eCPMs. The average is about $50 per 1000 daily active users, with some over $200 per 1k DAU. We’re also seeing very high completion rates of 4% - this is due to how integrated we are with the applications. Developers often see increases in page views per user per day as well.

   

  We have about 1,000 advertisers total - about 40% are US/Canada, 30% UK/Europe, and 30% Asia.

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• Specifically, one source tells me Mob Wars is projecting it will make $15 million in the next twelve months, although its developers haven’t gotten back to me to confirm.

• including $4 million from its recent acquisition of the Trymedia division from Macromedia (MACR).
• For the full year, Real sees revenue of $628 million to $643 million, including $12 million from Trymedia